My Precious

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The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing of one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are this year's winners:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the
subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

2. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until
you realize it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

11. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

12. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

13. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day
consuming only things that are good for you.

14. Glibido: All talk and no action.

15. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

16. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

Photos of Tibet in the early 1940's

These photos were taken in Tibet by members of the Tolstoy expedition of 1942-43. Two U.S. Army officers, Lt. Col. Ilya Tolstoy and Capt. Brooke Dolan were sent to Tibet from India to explore the possibility of getting military supplies to Chiang Kai-shek's Republican Chinese government, via Tibet. [...] A number of [... these photographs] were featured in a book by Rosemary Jones Tung, A Portrait of Lost Tibet: Photographs by Ilya Tolstoy and Brook Dolan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), a few were reproduced in Tibet: The Sacred Realm: Photographs 1880 - 1950 (Aperture Books, 1983), in a National Geographic [August, 1946 - ed.] magazine article and a few other places here and there. Many of them are still unidentified. [... Alltogether there ... ] are some [230] amazingly beautiful photographs [... that have been scanned] so far. Some have considerable historical interest, particularly in the light of the transformation of Tibet over the past 50 years.

http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/asianstudies/TibetanPhotos/Snaps.html

See also

A 1999 web site by Dr Rob Linrothe, Associate Professor and Director
of Art History at Skidmore College. In addition to the Tibet
Photographs site of he also published the following web pages: *
Karsha's Chuchikjyal Temple, Zangskar, 1996
(http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/asianstudies/new2/linrothe/Karsha/Chuchikjyal.html);
* Tibetan Art at Skidmore, 1998
(http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/asianstudies/new2/linrothe/TibetArtDisplay/Display.html);
* Monks and monasteries in Amdo, 1998
(http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/asianstudies/new2/linrothe/Qinghai/TongrenSi.html);
* Petroglyphs near Karsha, in Zangskar, 1998
(http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/asianstudies/new2/linrothe/Petroglyphs/RockArt.html);
* QuickTime video of Ladakh and Mangyu chorten, 1994.
(http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/asianstudies/new2/linrothe/Mangyu/Webpage.html)